Words Floating Around Our Skulls
by CleotheDreamer
Summary: Harry Potter was never a child. He hasn't been a child since he was dropped off at Number 4 Privet drive 17 years ago.


**Summary: Harry Potter was never a child. He hasn't been a child since he was dropped off at Number 4 Privet drive 16 years ago.**

**AN: Slightly sad, slightly happy, slightly poetic, maybe a little fluffy - I don't really know what to call this. (Insert shoulder shrug here.) Just a little drabble.**

**Rated for child abuse.**

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SummarHarry Potter was never a child. He hasn't been a child since he was dropped off at Number 4 Privet drive 17 years ago.  
SummHarry Potter was never a child. He hasn't been a child since he was dropped off at Number 4 Privet drive 17 years ago.  
Summary

There is a five-letter word carved on his hip bone just above the waistband of his pants.

He doesn't know why it's in this specific place. There doesn't seem to be any sick symbolism behind its morbid location. Just that it's bright against his skin. Haunting in its memory.

The letters are jagged and white; scarred by years and strangely dull, they crisscross like the lattice-work of a desolate scream illustrated by blood.

He can hardly remember when it was formed – a gritting of teeth, a flash of silver, an overbearing stench of usually absent alcohol permeating the air heavily.

It spells out his Uncle's hatred and he flinches heavily when he hears it, sees it, _feels _it.

_Freak._

Most days, the abuse is indirect.

It's inaction causing hunger. Inaction causing broken bones from Dudley. Inaction causing him to believe himself a freak.

Inaction. Inaction. Inaction. Inaction, until –

It is still abuse but it is hard to remember that when it is so indirect.

Of course, some of these things require doing, saying, yelling, but… it is not always the direct statements (admissions of guilt) that hurt the most. He sometimes even prefers the rare thrashing to the weeks in the cupboard – now room – if only for the solid, undeniable wrongness of it that he can cling onto. That he can cling to for the sake of his own self-hatred to know that it is not his fault. That there is something wrong and it is not him.

For when he is sitting in his cupboard on Christmas without any presents watching the Dursleys have Family dinner, it is often hard not to cry in self-blame – to believe himself an abnormal stain on the grandness of the Dursley family.

But, sometimes – when the frying pan hits, and the belt buckle stings, and the sporadic cigar burns patterns on his malnourished skin – he finds it easier to hate others rather than himself.

Most days the abuse is indirect. But other days, it very clearly isn't.

There is a certain seed of bitterness that settles behind his clenched teeth.

He is anything but stupid and he knows by now that he hasn't done anything to be treated this way. To have these lines blazing like a cruel brand upon his soul.

At first, he was hurt, scarred deep into his very soul, but overtime it grew into resentment.

This did not change the fact that his greatest wish was for a caring family to hold him tight and give him presents and love him unconditionally. But, it made the loneliness easier to swallow leaving lingering discontent and acrimony.

Yes. He craved the Dursley's love, no matter how piteous it seemed. But above all, he liked to blame them for his lack of love.

If only to feel less worse about himself.

He is locked away under the stairs, a hidden disgrace. The key is thrown out and the lights are turned off. He is a shadow in the corner. A skeleton in the closet. A bone-dry husk of a boy with only dreams to get him by.

He is a boy in a cupboard with only fear to rely on.

Until, a letter addressed to his cupboard changes all that and more. He is given an escape and he runs like Hogwarts is the light at the end of the dark tunnel of a life he lives.

He's got no family now, but maybe he can find some standing there, in the warmth of a hall larger than the house he left behind, feeling a solid weight of comfort settle in his stomach. A pat on his back, a reassuring word, and jaw set, stubborn loyalty repeat themselves in a torrent of images in his mind that remind him that he does have a home. That now, he has a family.

That he's loved.

The war doesn't turn out to be a fight against good or evil. There are too many child soldiers on both sides for purity and morals to even be considered a factor anymore. No, it is a fight to protect oneself and what one may hold dear.

Harry is clawing for a victory like it is the air he breathes. Above all else, he must protect his home, his family, the love and laughter and dreams of his generation. He is fighting for himself because what he needs to live – to _breathe_– is at stake.

He is fighting for himself even if it looks like he is playing the hero.

And when he dies, he knows he must live again for them.

He is not really a hero at all, just a selfish and bitter man – because he hasn't been a boy since he was dropped off at Number 4 Privet drive 17 years ago.

He was never a boy at all. Just a strange mockery of youth and adulthood; of horrors twisting around in too young skulls, fighting over each other to break apart his mind into splinters.

But he dies, and he lives, and Hogwarts is still there. And, his family is shattered but the pieces are waiting to be glued back together.

Harry Potter does his job and the war is won.

The castle is emptier than it ever was before even with so many bodies – so many people – filling up the halls like broken toy soldiers lost in cupboard corners. The halls are greying with sorrow and the fires of war smolder angrily without an ounce of hospitality. But, the castle is standing tall and proud, like none of this could really change it.

He thinks that, even though it is just a fragmented shell of what it once was, Hogwarts is still home.

Because it's the only place that can be.

The word on his hip still binds him in mind, body, and soul and he cannot help but feel he is exactly as it says: a freak. But, he's come to see now that the ones he's loved and who have loved him are exactly the same as he is. So it's okay. Because even if he's a freak, even if he's strange, at least he isn't alone anymore.

And nothing in the world could change that – not war, not hatred, and not even death have been able to stop Harry Potter from having a family.


End file.
